55 Afghan Militants Killed, Coalition Says

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan says it has killed 55 militants in the east of the country.

A coalition statement said the battle took place on Friday in Paktika province, which borders Pakistan.

It said militants ambushed a patrol with rocket and gun fire, prompting troops to fire back and call in warplanes.

It said the 55 insurgents killed included three key leaders. It did not identify them. Another 25 militants were wounded and another three detained.

Earlier Monday, police and U.S.-led coalition forces attacked militants planting a roadside bomb just to the north of Paktika province, in Nangarhar, killing one insurgent but also two civilians, according to Afghan officials.

A coalition spokesman confirmed the incident but not the civilian casualties, and said the operation was continuing.

Zalmay Dadak, mayor of Khogyani district, said police fatally shot one suspect shortly before midnight Sunday and gave chase to the others.

A helicopter from the U.S.-led coalition fired at the militants, but also hit a house in a village, killing a man and a four-year-old boy, Dadak said.

Villagers temporarily blocked the road Monday morning to protest the civilian deaths. A delegation of tribal elders would take their complaint to the provincial governor, he said.

"The house was away from where the clash was going on. It seems it was hit by accident," Dadak said. "We are worried that this kind of thing might happen again."

Abdul Mohammed, a senior provincial police official, also said one militant and two civilians were believed dead.

Coalition spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry said there was an overnight "engagement" with suspects "digging in the road." Perry said he had no reports of civilian casualties and declined to give details because the operation was not over.

Dadak said police had surrounded several suspects, but provided no more information.

Civilians are regularly killed in clashes between militants and security forces as well as bearing the brunt of insurgent suicide bombings.

Coalition and NATO commanders insist they take all reasonable precautions to avoid killing innocents. They blame militants for launching attacks from family homes. However, they face criticism for using aircraft to bomb targets in residential areas.

The Taliban's tactics have been changing - fewer direct confrontations with coalition forces and more roadside bombs, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.

Roadside blasts in four different provinces killed five coalition troops and five Afghan soldiers on Saturday.

Elsewhere, police said insurgents fired rockets toward an outpost of security forces in eastern Kunar province on Sunday, but hit a house and wounded a judge and two children.

Provincial police chief Abdul Jalal Jalal also said three trucks carrying supplies to coalition forces in Kunar were ambushed and burned Sunday.

Roadside bombs killed five more foreign troops and five government soldiers in Afghanistan during the weekend, part of a surge of violence that has made the country's battlefields deadlier for foreign forces than those in Iraq.

The U.S. administration has already highlighted the statistic to lobby its NATO allies - with limited success - to commit more forces to Afghanistan - a conflict likely to test the West's stomach for a long, grinding war.